Sport Within/Against the U.S. Empire

Sport within/against the U.S. Empire:

Queer Complicity, Anti-Colonial Activism

Heather Sykes

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

University of Toronto

Alan Ingham Lecture

North American Society for the Sociology of Sport

Portland, Oregon

November, 2014

Abstract

Modern sport has always played within, sometimes against, neoliberal, private, military and media empires. In the 21st century, the US Empire is voracious and contemporary sports are played within the ruins, and ongoing realities, of colonialism, accelerated by globalization, bankrolled and bankrupted by neoliberalism and brutalized by militarism. Critical theories used in sport sociology variously avoid and en/counter US Empire. How does North American sport sociology become complicit with the logic and practices of empire, as academics work within the precarious ‘academic-industrial-security’ complex? What type of research imaginations does critical sport sociology research need to support activism and activists? Queer theorizations of sport have been complicit with whiteness, gay male and settler dominance, but are also countering homonationalism, Zionism and militarism. Globalization theories are supporting imperial sport for development and peace programs, while others expose local assemblages of colonial, neoliberal and military interests. Postcolonial, transnational and indigenous sport feminisms are continuously having to counter western and US liberal feminisms. So, how do critical researchers foster research imaginations to counter empire, to recognize and then decolonize complicit assumptions? SiskaSassen (2009) urged researchers to ‘decipher the global’ by finding the disciplining condition in our own research. My current project, about sport mega-events, gender justice and anti-globalization, foregrounds anti-colonial activists’ analyses of the connections between sporting mega-events, globalization, colonialism and gender in/justice. Using examples of anti-colonial activism and media from my own project, I hope to generate a reflexive conversation about ways critical sport sociology en/counters colonialism, imperialism and the US empire.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge I’m giving this talk in the Portland metro area, which rests on traditional territories of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla tribes and other bands.

Much of this work has been shaped by my co-researchers at OISE who have worked on this project with me:Jeff Lloyd who connected Stephen Harper’s proroguing of the Canadian parliament to the Vancouver Olympics;Michael Wallner who looked at the gay cure movement in Brazil;Chandni Desai and Tyler Carson’s analysis of Israeli pinkwashing the Tel Aviv marathon and gay games;Salima Bhimani’s insights into Circassian activism across their diaspora;Itani—who is here—has taught me about how trans and queer theories and bodies travel and unravel across colonial and language borders, has taken the lead in analyzing militarism in this project and is such a valued colleague for thinking about homonationalisms in many contexts; and Manal Hamzeh, my partner, who introduced me to Circassian activists,took me to Tahrir Square, so generously translates language and politics, and who nurtures my decolonizing self.

This research is part ofa Standard Research Grant titled “Sport, Gender Justice and Anti-Globalization Movements” funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Sport within/against the U.S. Empire:Queer Complicity, Anti-Colonial Activism

“…Formerly marginal, subordinated and polyform citizen-subjects are claiming difficult coalitional psychic terrain, and in so doing an original postempire yet transnational citizenship is emerging, made possible through the decolonizing activities of what is defined as the methodology of the oppressed,” (Sandoval, 2000: 78).

Empire, Globalization and Sport Sociology

Modern sport has always played within, sometimes against, empire. In the 21st century, the US Empire is voracious. Contemporary sports are played within its ruins, and the ongoing realities of colonialism, accelerated by globalization, bankrolled and bankrupted by neoliberalism, brutalized by militarism. Critical theories used in sport sociology variously avoid and en/counter US Empire. What type of research imaginations does critical sport sociology research need to support activism and activists? Globalization theories are supporting imperial sport for development and peace programs, while others expose local assemblages of colonial, neoliberal and military interests. Queer theorizations of sport have been complicit with whiteness, gay male and settler dominance, but are also countering homonationalism, Zionism and militarism. Postcolonial, transnational and indigenous sport feminisms are continuously having to counter western and US liberal feminisms. How does our collective work in North American sport sociology become complicit with the logic and practices of empire, even as academics we are each very differently positioned within the precarious ‘academic-industrial-security’ complex? How do critical researchers foster research imaginations to counter empire, to recognize and then decolonize complicit assumptions? My current project, about sport mega-events, gender justice and anti-globalization, foregrounds anti-colonial activists’ analyses and insights. Using examples from this project, I hope to generate a reflexive conversation about ways critical sport sociology en/counters colonialism, imperialism and the US empire.

How does our collective work in North American sport sociology become complicit with the logic and practices of empire? What type of research imaginations does critical sport sociology research need to support activism and activists? My current project, about sport mega-events, gender justice and anti-globalization, foregrounds anti-colonial activists’ analyses and insights. Using examples from this project, I hope to generate a reflexive conversation about ways that sport sociology en/counters colonialism, imperialism and the US empire.

A decade ago, Emma Perez (2004) gave a keynote to NASSS about the decolonial imaginary and queer Xicana feminism. Lindsay Hayhurst and Simon Darnell (2011) call for decolonization to be part of critical research about ‘sport for development’. Critical scholars of globalized sport and urban geography have critiqued the displacement of marginalized communities and the securitization of large sporting events. Media scholars and journalists, such as Jules Boycoff and Dave Zirin, keep exposing the disastrous local consequences for cities that host sport mega-events. Yet still, much research about globalized sport remains androcentric and US-centric, not taking up issues of colonialism, sexuality or gender.

One problem facing me is how to theorize the movements of the IOC and FIFA, as non-territorial, supranational, empires to cities across the globe, while activists have grassroots, local, sometimes indigenous, connections to the local. How can I connect the translocal context of host cities, while the private empires rove from continent to continent? The wisdom is being generated by activists. Activists give voice to the ideas and analysis of what Hardt and Negri (2004) call the ‘multitude’[i]. “These protesters in the streets, in social forums, and in NGOs not only present grievances against the present system but also provide numerous reform proposals, ranging from institutional arrangements to economic policies” (Hardt & Negri, 2004: 323). Antiracists and feminists of color activists are familiar with the multitude, the complexities of different groups working in coalitions for a common cause.

I aim to work in solidarity with anti-colonial activists. My colleague at OISE, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez (2012), writes about three forms of solidarity relational, transitive and creative. “To think of solidarity relationally is to the ask the question: how am I being made by others? What are the consequences of my being on others?” (p. 52). Positioned as we are, within the US empire and colonial presents, Rubén argues that experiences of colonization are the basis for relational solidarity.

For me, I can only approach this by mixing my passionate journey—my heart-journey—with my academic and political journeying. My personal encounters and academic investments constitute who I am—always becoming. There is no prior ‘me’ to a research project, just as there is no prior ‘I’ to an encounter or relationship. I am formed within these things. From my location within the North American academy, any calls I make for a sport sociology that counters empire, or queer research in solidarity with anti-colonial activists, risks quickly sliding into political, theoretical and methodological imperial demands. Each call must be subject to ongoing self-reflexivity, seeking ways to work from, yet against, my privileged positions within the US empire, settler colonial Canada and post-imperial Britain.

So, at this NASSS, I invite us to think about how:

sport sociology can work against US empire;

sport research can supports activists’ work;

and, how queer sport research can be done in solidarity with anti-colonial activism.

I center my talk around my encounters with media during my recent research project. I want to share how I’m learning from anti-colonial and indigenous activists. Indeed how I have been ‘made and remade’ during this work.

Empire and Anti-Colonial Research

The concept of coloniality as “the darker side of modernity” (Mignolo, 2007: 159) is central. Indeed, Aníbal Quijano (2007) argues “coloniality, then, is still the most general form of domination in the world today, once colonialism as an explicit political order was destroyed” (p. 170). One move has been to think about the US in terms of military empire and settler colonial state, rather than just as a neoliberal nation state. Dealing with Canada as a settler colonial state is also vital. Another move is to use empire to think about supranational sport organizations. Anti-globalization involves “the act of imagination needed to make the connections between the suffering of people far away and the problems and events in one’s own community” (Starr, 2005: 93). So, where to draw from? Center-periphery theories. Global North-Global South. Transnational feminism, or translocal anarchism? Anti-globalization’, ‘alter-globalization’, ‘globalization from below’ or ‘no global’ (della Porta et al, 2006; Starr, 2005; Steger, 2009; Harvey, Horne & Safai, 2009)?

A decade ago, NederveenPieterse (2004) described how neoliberal globalization morphed into a neoliberal US empire through the ‘osmosis’ of militarism and business. “The core of empire” he explained, “is the national security state and the military-industrial complex; neoliberalism is about business, financial operations and marketing” (p. 123). In recent US administrations, neoliberalism and increasing imperialism both involve “vast military spending and spin and marketing” (p. 123). US over-investment in the military has incapacitated the country in health care and education, so that “the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country in fact refers to the world’s and history’s largest debtor nation with unsustainable levels of debt” (p. 137). One of the implications, that parallels sporting mega-events, is that the US military-industrial complex now involves massive private military contractors “who operate outside national and international law” (p. 137) and are capable of “unleashing global instability” (p. 137) which aligns with a US policy of “preventative and perpetual wars” (p. 130).

Critical theories used in sport sociology variously avoid, and encounter, US Empire. George Steinmetz[ii] suggests that there is an amnesia within much contemporary sociology about the historical entanglement of sociology with both colonial and anti-colonial projects. Steinmetz (2014) argues that “sociologists cannot avoid empire, even those focused on the immediate present and the territorially domestic" (p. 78). Empire is a vast concept, with different definitions, sub-fields and traditions. Steinmetz (2014) defines empires as "expansive, militarized, and multiethnic political organizations that significantly limit the sovereignty of the peoples and polities they conquer" (p. 79) [whereas imperialism is “a strategy of political control over foreign lands that does not necessarily involved conquest, occupation and durable rule by outsiders” (p. 79).] ‘Informal, non-territorial’ empires⁠[iii] (Steinmetz, 2014) became dominant during the twentieth century. Informal empires exercise control through military, economic and other means but “there is no conquest or permanent seizure of political sovereignty” (p. 84). For example, US imposes its interests on other states without ruling them directly, and now functions through the manipulation of economic markets and technologies of “global grid of semipermanent military bases, temporary military installations” with “black sites, extraordinary rendition, drone strikes” (p. 85).

Similarly, Hardt and Negri (2000) argue that contemporary forms of empire do not rely on the conquest of nation-states but new forms of global sovereignty “composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule” (cited in Steinmetz, 2014: 87). Thinking of the IOC and FIFA as supranational, non-territorial empires seems apropos given how communities, urban publics, cities, local and national organizing committees are subjected to the ‘single logic’ of Olympic or FIFA requirements. I borrow Steve Coll’s terms ‘private empires’ to refer to FIFA and the IOC.

Bordieu’s theory of social fields has, according to George Steinmetz (2014), a prominent sociological approach to empire and colonialism whereby metropole and colony can be analyzed as quite different sets of social fields, linked transnationally by scientific, cultural and, in our case, sporting fields. Sport sociologists (McGuire, 1999; Rowe, 2003; Scherer, Falcus & Jackson, 2008) work on globalization, have greatly expanded our analysis of global capital and local resistances within sport. Even Ritzer’s notion of grobalization (Andrews & Ritzer, 2007) holds potential to analyze the imperial ambitions of FIFA and the IOC. Much social field, and some globalization theory, is still deployed within sport sociology within firmly ‘western’ and US-centric frames. Too often, it shies away from an explicit analysis of colonialism orUS empire. Indigenous and transnational feminists, such as Andrea Smith, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Cherrie Moraga, Chandra Mohanty, have led the way as activists and theorists in analyzing colonialism, empire and global capital. A decade ago, Emma Perez (2004) gave a keynote to NASSS about the decolonial imaginary and queer Xicana feminism. Ruth Trinidad Galván (2014) recently called for Chicana alliances that re-center glocal knowledges and feminist epistemologies of the global south. Lindsay Hayhurst and Simon Darnell (2011) call for decolonization to be part of critical research about ‘sport for development’, but much globalization research about sport remains androcentric and US-centric, not taking up issues of colonialism, sexuality or gender.

Although he doesn’t deal with sport, Paul Amar’s (2013)work on security, gender and sexuality uses assemblage theory to looks at contradictions within global neoliberalism[iv] in the Global South, specifically Rio de Janeiro and Cairo. Amar uses assemblage theory in a deliberate, anti-colonial way. He uses an “archipelago method” (p. 236) to look at Rio de Janeiro and Cairo as “transfer hubs” (p. 236). This approach is all the more compelling because Amar infuses, as he also translates, queer theory into his analysis of international relations, political science and anti-colonial anthropology. He works against fixed binaries and Western supremacies - whether they be sexual, political or regional categories - to map assemblages of what he calls new ‘human-security states’. He looks at “innovations” in forms of militarism and security, developed in the Global South, alongside shifts in sexuality politics at the scale of the city.

“The new alliances and dynamics are queer and curious, indeed, when seen from the perspective of political analysts who assume:

military institutions are synonymous with authoritarian regimes,

that the security state is the ontological opposite of civil society, or

that all new forms of global governance only emanate in the Global North and then move southward” (p. 14).

Amar offers a way of researching the imperial, global reach of the IOC and FIFA, has potential to go deeper into the historical and regional complexities of mega-event host cities, while generating anti-colonial advances for transnational sport sociology.

Roving Colonialism, Non-Territorial Sporting Empires & the Multitude

I suggest that sport mega-events, such as the Olympics, are forms of ‘roving colonization’. Every two or four years, each mega-event touches down in a new city requiring grandiose construction projects, and the displacement of poor urban communities. Huge profits are made by land and property developers. Ruling elites use the mega-events for geopolitical gain. The forced removal of local people, stealing land to make profit, gender and sexual violence are all forms of ongoing colonization.

In the 21st century modern sporting events take place on a global scale as huge transnational commodities. Sporting organizations with imperial, liberal—and, even, anti-colonial politics—continue to follow a modernist model of sport that involves a roving cycle of events in different host cities across the globe.

Such mega-events rely on global branding that invigorate nationalisms. These regional and national narratives are seductive, cathecting massive populist support, volunteerism and participation, despite the brutal ‘states of exception’ that mega-events require. Various ‘development’, ‘regeneration’ and ‘legacy’ discourses about sport participation function effectively since they perpetuate familiar colonial logics about ‘civilizing’, ‘underdevelopment’, ‘experts’, and ‘participation’. These myths have become very effective ways of branding sporting mega-events. They seem to travel well. Yet patriarchal global elites who profit from sporting mega-events also rely on more ambiguous aspects of nationalism. Nationalist support for sport mega-events also involves complexpsychic dynamics such as imperial nostalgia, colonial amnesia and anti-colonial nationalisms.